Shen Chen and Lauren Marby at Independent Art Projects

Works by Shen Chen and Lauren Mabry

Independent Art Projects

Opening September 25

Shen Chen

After thirty years of practicing and creating art, Shen has become an artist with a profound influence in today’s art world, stirring “us to think and to perceive aesthetically, to open new conduits of perception and thought in the act of painting and in the reasoned meditative pose necessary to appreciate truly significant abstract painting.” (Robert C. Morgan) His work blends multiple cultural elements as he layers concepts of time and space with Zen philosophy, meditation, and repetition. Lilly Wei notes how, “in this perceptual vanishing and reconstitution, a cycle of meditation is established for the viewer in which what exists and what does not is inseparable.” Valerie Smith further emphasizes “what does emerge is a highly considered process that is immersive…to a peaceful place where there is time.” His paintings transport us—they bring us “full circle; just as the breath moves from emptiness to plenitude, so does our mind appreciate the void out of which all things originate.” (Jonathan Goodman)

Lauren Mabry

Lauren Mabry makes painterly, abstract, ceramic art. She is a calculated risk taker with a keen attraction to color, movement, and material. The transformative properties of clay and glaze drive her ongoing compulsion to make, play, and experiment with surface. Mabry’s work communicates directly through its formal and aesthetic qualities because it’s focused heavily on basic considerations like color, contrast, and movement.

Mabry’s work is a synthesis of intuitive, expressive surfaces and elemental forms – the result of a long-term exploration of the physical and chemical behavior of ceramic materials. The simple, cylindrical forms Mabry paints are still so the colors clash and resound with a kind of musical timbre, flowing with movement and creating rich, hypnotic tones and textures.